Before her burned body was discovered in a desert in Kuwait on Jan. 21, overseas Filipino worker (OFW) Jullebee Ranara was already complaining of the violent tendency of the 17-year old son of her employer.
The case of Ranara is one of the main reasons why Department of Migrant Workers (DWW) Secretary Susan “Toots” Ople decided to send a fact-finding team in Kuwait to study and come up with recommendations that would improve government intervention measures to prevent abuses of OFWs.
Ople said among the members of the fact-finding team were Bernard Bonina, a veteran on the same mission from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD); and lawyer Geraldine Mendez, from the anti-illegal recruitment of the DMW.
“They will be leaving next week. They are given a week to review welfare cases, talk to the residents of our shelters and provide performance assessments of our people there,” said Ople in a press briefing on Saturday, Jan. 28.
The fact-finding team will basically check the existing protocols to ensure the welfare of around 268,000 OFWs in Kuwait—around 195,000 of them are household service workers (HSWs) like Ranara.
The team is also expected to identify the gaps and other loopholes that would serve as the basis for the recommendations to further improve the services to the OFWs and protect them from all kinds of abuses.
Ople said the goal is to come up with proactive measures that will cover regular monitoring of OFWs in Kuwait, from the time they would arrive and during the span of their stay in the Middle East country.
Arrival, autopsy
The body of Ranara arrived in the Philippines at around 9:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 27.
Ople said the cadaver was subjected to autopsy by the National Bureau of Investigation on Saturday before the start of the wake on Sunday.
“We will leave it to the family of they would disclose the results of the autopsy,” said Ople, amid reports from Kuwait media that she was sexually abused by the 17-year old son of her employer.
Ople said the suspect is now under the custody of the Kuwait police and charges are expected to be filed.
But he said there is no official documents that would verify the report of the Kuwait media that Ranara was sexually abused: “There is no documentation pointing ton this as a rape or whether the victim was pregnant.”
“But this is a murder case, the primary suspect is the 17-year old son of the employer who is now police custody, there is already a prosecutor handling the case on the Kuwait side, the lawyer engaged by the DMW through our embassy is in direct contact with the prosecutor and the police,” she added.
Stepping up monitoring
After Ople assumed the top DMW post, she immediately issued a directive that mandates Philippine Recruitment Agencies (PRAs) and Foreign Recruitment Agencies (FRAs) to appoint welfare desk officers (WEDO) who would monitor the deployment and condition of the OFWs they hired.
DMW Undersecretary Bernard P. Olalia said that from the time the OFW arrives in the destination country, WEDOs must check if the OFWs were able to reach their designated employers.
But the task does not end there.
Olalia said it is also the responsibility of the WEDOs of local and foreign recruitment agencies to regularly check on the condition of the OFWs they deployed.
“They must find ways to communicate with them (OFWs) through Facebook or any other forms of communications. They must regularly check if the OFWs have concerns, if they are experiencing abuses and if they have complaints,” said Olalia.
In this way, Oalia said the PRAs and FRAs are always updated on the condition of the OFWs.
The preventive measures that include regular monitoring of the OFWs are expected to be one of the focuses of the fact-finding team that will leave for Kuwait next week.